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Poll shows animated Latino electorate

According to the Pew polling organization, an overwhelming share of Latino registered voters (86%) say the economy will be very important in making their electoral decisions this year. This percentage is similar to the overall population, in which 84% cite the economy as very important. Latino voters say that health care (82%), terrorism (80%), immigration (79%), education (78%) and foreign policy (74%) are also very important voting issues.

However, Latino voters lag all registered voters as far as engagement is concerned. Two-thirds of Latino voters (67%) say they have been following news about the election very or fairly closely. That is a noticeably lower rate of engagement than among all voters (85%). Among all voters, 80% claim to have been giving a lot of thought to the election, while a smaller majority of Latino voters (68%) say the same.

Released this week, the Pew poll shows that most Latino voters (63%) say they are more interested in politics this year than they were in 2012. This tracks alongside all voters, who show a similar percentage (60%) of increased interest in politics.

Among registered voters in the Latino community, Hillary Clinton currently has a 66%-24% advantage over Donald Trump. This is similar to the lead Barack Obama’s had among Latinos at similar points in the past two presidential campaigns. A record 27.3 million Latinos will be eligible to vote in the 2016 presidential elections. Get-out-the-vote campaigns in the various Latino organizations have registered thousands of new voters.